I lived and worked in Eastern Europe in the early ‘90s. This was just a handful of years after the fall of communism. During my stay in the region, I witnessed many firsts. Included were hyper inflation, introduction of new currencies, the construction of democratic governments, and the shift away from socialism. Now, 15 plus years later, I am residing in the U.S., and witnessing the shift towards socialized healthcare in my own country! Given this unfortunate plan by the Obama Administration, I wish to recite my first hand experience with socialized medicine.
While I was living in Eastern Europe, I had an accident which required immediate care from a doctor. I was whisked into a medical facility in Warsaw, Poland. Aghast, I saw close to a hundred people waiting to see a physician. Encountering this, I commented to my employee (who had taken me to this facility) that we were going to be there all day! To which he replied, “No sir, we go to the back of the facility!”
And so we maneuvered through the maze in the lobby and entered the back of the large soviet style facility complete with medical equipment that appeared to have come from the 1960s and 70s. We traveled a distance to another area – which looked totally different. It had modern medical devices and equipment, well groomed nurses and aides and a young, handsome, thirty something physician who spoke perfect English.
I was looked after and was provided excellent care from the staff and this American educated physician. I joked with him about what I had witnessed getting to him. He said to me simply, “the people whom you passed in the front of the building are covered by the government healthcare program. My “wealthy” patients are treated back here because they pay for it.”
This was my first encounter with socialized medicine. Coming back from this area of the world and re-entering the greatest country on earth, I cannot believe that I am witnessing a possible repeat of such an experience here!
According to Alan B. Miller’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal , there are 1,300 private insurers competing in our market today. Miller, Chairman and CEO of Universal Health Services, rightfully opines that the introduction of a government funded healthcare plan will drive rates down for this plan which, through the law of economics, will drive pricing down industry wide thereby driving many insurers out of business. Critics will say that such a consequence is good. However, with fewer insurers (and fewer options), many employers will simply turn the healthcare cost over to the government because the private insurers who survive will do so with higher priced premiums. In other words, the “wealthy” will pay higher premiums and go to the back of the facility for treatment, while the majority of Americans sit in a large lobby waiting their turn to be seen like the Poles did in my case some fifteen years ago.
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